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All content copyright 2014-2018 by Judith M. Smith.

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On the Desk This Week…

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The pile on the right belongs to me; the pile on the left is courtesy of my UMUC LIbrarian Overlords. I also have a reel of microfilm cued up to read this week. And my students complain about having to read 30 pages in two days! Poor babies!

What you see is what I’m reading over the next week.

No, of course, I don’t have to get it all done in seven days, but I’m on a roll and the research is getting interesting. Once I get into a book, I can’t put it down (unless it is terrible, like that Eppes book). I hate to ding a fellow writer, but that thing just oozed magnolias and moonlight. I thought I was going to go into insulin shock a few times while reading the gooey prose, or else die of boredom. But I digress.

My reading focuses on the period 1860-70; this is the timeframe when Emmett’s father fought in the Civil War, married Elizabeth Maxwell, then settled in Pensacola for three years.

I finished Letters From Pensacola (CWSM, 1993) last night. It is an interesting collection of letters written by Confederate and Union soldiers who were stationed in Pensacola between 1860-1865. The letters tell of all kinds of hardships endured by the soldiers: Interestingly, it wasn’t so much the fighting, but the disease that took its toll on the soldiers’ health. Research bears out that disease was the main cause of death for soldiers on both sides of the conflict.

Emmett’s father was never stationed in Pensacola, by the way; he was in Virginia during most of the war, and was with General Robert E. Lee when he surrendered in 1865.

Letters From Pensacola was published through the The Civil War Soldiers Museum; the author and publisher is Norman W. Haines, Jr., MD. Unfortunately, the museum was damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004; however, the surviving artifacts were donated to the T.T. Wentworth Museum, also in Pensacola.